How to be a popular loner with Hyperpop Daily

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Spend too much time on Hyperpop Daily’s Instagram and you’ll likely lose your grip on reality. The mysterious account started out as a page spotlighting the hyperpop/digicore scene but has since morphed into a rambling, absurdly detailed messenger of SoundCloud rap drama and lore. Many of the posts read like Wattpad speculative fiction. Countless PluggnB careers are staked on civil wars, betrayals, a corrupt repost economy. Here’s one where HPD claims that Yeat plagiarized the bell from Summrs’ ex-girlfriend Bell. It’s dumb as hell, but I can always count on HPD to put me in a better mood and make me think about the music I listen to in a surreal new context. And others are as intrigued as I am. Since its inception at the end of 2020, the page has gained 34k followers and, for better or worse, gotten the attention of a few big artists including one Playboi Carti. As of my writing this, the person behind Hyperpop Daily hasn’t revealed their identity publicly, but they agreed to a cameras-off Zoom interview.

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How’s your day going?

Pretty awesome.

How so?

Just on my like, hyperpop vibes.

I feel you, yeah. What’s a day in the life of Hyperpop Daily?

I usually wake up anywhere from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and I just open Photoshop and post about things that come to my mind. And sometimes I do life stuff, but when I have free time, I just like to shitpost.

Are you in school right now?

I am not in school at the moment.

So your life right now, is it literally just Hyperpop Daily or do you do other stuff too?

Nah. I do stuff outside of Hyperpop Daily, but I can’t tell you because I’m an operative of the government, so it’s kinda like that vibe.

Gotcha, makes sense.

Like I’m literally in ties with Opium. That’s how deep in I am.

Ohh damn. Well, let’s start with the music. How did you get interested in the scene?

I’ve been around the scene for a decent amount of time. There’s Instagram pages–if you just go to your Explore page right now, it’s like, two years worth of recycled NLE Choppa and 6ix9ine content and it all kinda sucks. But people make a living off that shit. They just repost stupid shit and then people buy promo for some reason. The page that really mastered the Instagram algorithm of “kinda stupid shit but also serious enough where enough eyes are on it” was RAPTV. They literally posted two days that the CEO of the LGBT community forgave DaBaby. Like, that shit is really stupid but they know what they’re doing and that shit got reposted on Twitter probably 100 million impressions. So I was like, what if I just took this concept, did the same thing for the underground and made it as big of a shitpost as possible?

Did you have the idea of what Hyperpop Daily could be from the jump?

Looking back, if people actually remember how it used to be, it did seem very scheme-y from then to now in terms of inserting myself, but it was never like that. For me, it was like, if I keep joking about some of these people with the amount of audience I have, I know they’re gonna get very mad at me. And I don’t wanna cause too much chaos. I wanna cause just enough chaos, but not chaos to the point where I know it can be problematic. So I just kinda moved away from hyperpop/digicore people, not because I don’t want to platform them, I just kinda know how my audience is and I don’t want them to get backlash because of that.

What do you think the most chaotic moment you’ve caused so far has been?

I think I had beef with UnoTheActivist at some point, and that was like at 5000 followers. That shit was really funny. He was literally in my DM’s, he was going crazy. That was some funny shit. And then Carti unironically blocked me on Instagram. That was never a made-up thing! He actually blocked me on Instagram. Fuckin’ Playboi Carti saw one of my posts and just straight up blocked me, like he was just sick of my shit. That is the most hilarious thing ever.

Do you have any intel on what post he saw?

I don’t know, but the most recent one I can remember until he blocked me was some shit like, “Ken Carson really started the rage beat wave” or something.

What is the strangest celebrity DM you’ve gotten?

Probably Summrs. That shit was crazy. He messaged me and was like, “You need to stop posting all that bullshit.” And I was just like, “Do you like Bladee?” And he was like, “Don’t know him.” And I was like, “You guys should collab.” And he left me on read. But if you go back, like 2017, he liked a Bladee post. So he was capping in my DM’s.

Damn that’s wack.

I think that might be the wost thing he’s done. Like all the allegations? Not as bad as him capping about Bladee. What a fucked up dude.

[laughs] I’m not gonna comment on that one. For your content, how do you get your juices flowing? To me, it reads like something out of Wattpad or some shit. Like this shit gets deep. What goes through your head when you’re writing any of these things?

This was like a few years ago. I think I was on a Discord with one of my friends, and we used to read these fuckin Wattpad Suicide Boys, Fat Nick, Bladee fan fictions, and they were just the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen. It was just so overly dramatic, cause you’re just sitting there and someone dies but Bladee is crying. I was laughing my ass off. [laughs] So I was like, I’m just gonna continue this old memory I have and make it so fuckin’ stupid. The shit that people come up with on that website, it’s so funny and I just wanted to keep doing it I guess.

I was wondering, what do you want this project to look like over the next couple years?

I think once January hits and I am in a better situation just generally real-life wise, I think I wanna start doing more serious, real-life interview type content. And I feel like I could definitely pull some strings to get that shit to happen which would be pretty epic. So I’m trying to do Our Generation Music shit but also funny, and I also wanna do Pitchfork shit but like, mixed with The Onion. I just wanna make a shitpost website with some serious articles sprinkled in.

It’s cool that you’re carving out this space in music journalism or content creation or whatever you wanna call it that’s humorous and thoughtful. I feel like journalists often can’t do enough of the former without being misread as hateful.

Damn that’s like, really deep and kinda meaningful in a twisted hyperpop way on some serious shit, I appreciate that.

At this point I just have a bunch of questions about the page and the lore, do you mind if I ask you about a few of your theories?

For sure.

So before we get too deep, I need some self-help advice. Do you have any advice on how to be a popular loner who stacks his bread and stays lowkey?

Alright, alright. So first thing you gotta do is have less than a thousand Twitter followers. If you have more than a thousand Twittter followers, you will never be a popular loner. Becuase then you’re in the group chats and shit and you’re talking to people all day. A real popular loner? They have only people in their cell phone they talk to. They don’t have Instagram group chats, Twitter group chats, that’s all fake shit bro. Also Discord. If you use Discord, you are not a popular loner and fuck you, ’cause you’re a bitch. I wholeheartedly mean that. I don’t hate an app more than I hate Discord.

But also, you gotta start investing in crypto. Not the NFT bullshit, ’cause that shit is fucking cringe. But if you put a fucking $100 in Ethereum right now, that shit will probably be at least two grand in like, two years. So that’s just like some bread that you can stack on the side while you’re making more bread with your main hustle. It’s like genius entrepeneur shit. But if you’re doing the NFT shit, that shit’s all corny and you aren’t a real popular at that point, in my opinion.

And the last thing: You gotta read a book a day. Because if you’re not reading every day, you are not getting new thoughts in your brain and you’re just regurgitating content. You watched Squid Game one time and that’s all you post about. You don’t wanna be that dude.

Alright, well thanks for that information, I’m gonna commit that to memory for sure. I guess diving in a bit more…first, thanks for documenting the Great SoFaygo War. I was just wondering, as a person who took history class, I’ve heard that history is portrayed by the victors. And you portray SoFaygo as a kind of Robin Hood of SoundCloud in your narrative. Do you feel like there’s any bias there? Did you ever consider the position of Slayworld as a group of starving, struggling artists just trying to make the most of the repost economy?

You could make the argument that they were, but Summrs and Autumn and Kankan corrupted the political sphere of Slayworld, and that’s why SoFaygo had to save the Hyperpop Daily multiverse. ‘Cause they were taking their toxic vibes and putting it on the entire Soundcloud rap scene so they could have a monopoly on the SoundCloud economy. And if you’ve ever taken a financial class, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal or some shit. You shouldn’t do that. It’s probably not illegal in America ‘cause we’re kinda dumb, but you don’t wanna have someone just ruling everything. [Slayworld] took over Florida, they took over Texas, Louisiana, both the Carolinas, their influence was unmatched. They had Weiland, Cash Bently whoever the fuck Frankslastday was, that other dude…I think his name was Dom Cicero or some shit, he’s cool or whatever. And they had this big massive army of troops and they were surrounding Atlanta. And at the time, SOS, Slimesito, ATL [Smook], their powers just weren’t strong enough to fight the Slayworld forces. So there’s this dude and his name is Yabujin, and he kinda has like, Bladee vibes but in a cooler, more lowkey way. It’s just kinda his own vibe but cooler. And there’s anime references and shit, like it’s really cool, you should check it out, his vibes are crazy. But anyways Yabujin can see everything, like he’s above the world itself. So he’s looking at the shit that’s going on and Slayworld is building their forces and shit, and he’s like, man that’s kinda fucked up. So he sees this dude SoFaygo and is like, “Ok I’m gonna give this dude my blessing.” Boom, that happens. So SoFaygo is the protector of Yabujin because he emitted a vibe to SoFaygo. He gave him a cool sword and armor and shit, it was super fire.

Do you remember what type of armor and sword?

He had silver armor, he had white and black knee socks, and he also had some really furry paws and he had cat ears, and it was awesome and it was really cool. It was kinda cute, but not in a sus way, just kinda a cool lowkey way. But anyways, so like this dude, he gathers all his army forces and they all play Roblox. ‘Cause SoFaygo built his fanbase off Roblox, that’s some actual shit that happened. If you actually look at the history books, there was over 500,000 casualties on the SoFaygo side. That number is disputed though, but I’m not gonna get into that. But on the Slay side, only 200,000 people died. So theoritically speaking, not that many Slay soldiers died, and they were the aggressors. So on a historical basis, you probably can’t argue that they were the good people. But anyway, what happeend at the end: SoFaygo shot Izaya. And Summrs saw. And Summrs was like NOOOOO. And then the battle just ended and now Summrs has very severe trauma from that experience, and his whole new album is based off of that. 

That’s what Nothing more Nothing LESS is about?

Yeah, because he’s talking about his expereinces in life and stuff. Obviously there’s some obvious messages in the album, like he misses his grandma, there’s the concept of growing up, missing previous romantic interests, but the underlying idea is he’s reflecting on all of this because of the SoFaygo War. So after this, SoFaygo, he’s the GOAT. He’s in all the magazines ‘cause he’s the GOAT. He literally killed the opps, boom. So now he’s famous, has like two million followers on Instagram, boom. And Summrs is still lowkey ‘cause he’s got all that built up trauma from what happened during the war. But if you go back to the war, Yeat and Kankan were on the sidelines watching everything happen. They watched Izaya die. What was the name of Izaya’s album?

The ones that’s like 33 songs long? I think it’s called Principles.

Ok fuck. Anyways, Izaya is still dead in the timeline, so that’s like a posthumous album. It’s like Juice WLRD 999 vibes. But anyways, Yeat and Kankan were on the sidelines. They see Izaya literally die. Goonie doesn’t really have a major role, after this he just becomes a Fortnite streamer. So Yeat and Kankan, they’re like, “Man, those dudes are lame so we’re just gonna boss up.” And that’s why Yeat is really sorry bout that. ‘Cause he thinks they’re all lame now, so he just went up and he brought Kankan with him ‘cause that’s his day one. And then Autumn saw that shit and was like, “That is sus,” so he starts beefing with Yeat, and that’s the whole Twizzwick conflict that recently just ended. But it was sort of like–you know when you have a war and nobody wins? It was kinda like that. That’s kinda where we’re at in the timeline right now, so hopefully that all makes sense.

Thanks for clarifying that. Speaking of power struggles, who would you say are your top 5 Marxists in the rap game right now?

Number one would probably have to be Babytron. He just seems like he’s for the people. He’s like, the people’s champ. Number two would probably be Rod Wave ‘cause he just raps about being there for your day ones. The Red Revolution, all the communist people were there for their day ones, and that’s why they won. The one ugly dude in Russia who was like the king, that’s why he died ‘cause they were there for each other ‘cause they’re goated. So he’s kinda like that but his own vibe. Number three would probably be emotionals, not for any reason, I just think they have communist vibes in a good way. Number four is probably Dani Kiyoko, I feel like they just work with everyone in a good way. So that’s kinda communism, ‘cause you’re equal with everyone in a good way. Number five is Tisakorean.

Noticed there was no Carti on that list. Has that changed?

Nah I feel like he’s one of those BreadTubers. He thinks he’s about that life but he’s not. He’s kinda like the Vaush of SoundCloud.

This is a tough question…but Summrs or Summrs Archive?

Damn, that is a tough question. I kinda feel like Summrs Archive. I think his music is just more timeless. Nobody sounds like Summrs on a Xangang beat. That’s why all that shit is so so timeless. LIke the Packrunner song on SoundCloud, the Summrs song, it gets taken down every two weeks, but when it gets uploaded again, that shit has 100,000 views in like a day. I’m not joking. The most recent one is like seven months ago, it already has 200,000 listens on SoundCloud. That’s the impact that his music had on a lot of people, that they still come back to his old old shit and still bump it. That’s fucking crazy. I feel like the Slay shit and the most recent album, it’s good but it’s just not Summrs Archive. I want Gucci slides and Thrasher hoodies and I don’t wanna think about important life shit. I wanna go back to that for 30 minutes of my life.

Final question–this is from a fan–do your parents know what hyperpop is?

Unfortunately.

[laughs] Why unfortunately?

Uhhhh the government is monitoring this call, I can’t tell you why.